The Court rejects the Appellate Division’s mistaken
reading of Keyport to authorize the Board’s unilateral
alteration of a collectively negotiated agreement.
Keyport does not stand for the proposition that anytime
a municipal public employer can claim an economic
crisis, managerial prerogative allows the public
employer to throw a collectively negotiated agreement
out the window. To the contrary, Keyport painstakingly
emphasized the significance of an agency of State
government enacting a temporary emergency regulation to
provide local governmental managers with enhanced
prerogatives. The regulation’s existence made all the
difference in Keyport, and there is a lack here of an
authorizing temporary emergency regulation that
permitted temporary furloughs. Keyport does not support
the award of summary judgment to the Board.